The Schwartz Cloud Report

MongoDB Supplier 10gen Scoops $42M in Funding

10gen, the company backing the popular open-source NoSQL-based MongoDB database and a cloud-based monitoring service to support it, today said it has received a cash infusion of $42 million.

Leading the latest round of venture funding was New Enterprise Associates and backed by existing investors Sequoia Capital, Flybridge Capital Partners and Union Square Ventures. In total 10Gen has raised $73 million. The huge investment is the latest sign that MongoDB is gaining momentum as a repository for emerging big data applications.

Former DoubleClick founder and CTO Dwight Merriman and Eliot Horowitz, also an engineer coming from DoubleClick, which is now part of Google, led development of MongoDB and subsequently launched 10gen.

MongoDB is popular because it is better suited than traditional relational databases for handling documents and other unstructured data types. Unlike relational databases designed to store data in tables and rows, MongoDB stores JSON-type content with dynamic schemas. MongoDB aims to "bridge the gap between key-value stores (which are fast and scalable) and relational databases (which have rich functionality)," according to a FAQ on the 10gen site.

"We want to change the database market, to make MongoDB the best way for companies to build new applications," said Merriman, who is now10gen's CEO. "Our goal is to give tech teams not only a database that scales to any big data level required but also helps developers be productive and more nimble. That has been the vision of the MongoDB open source community and we want to continue to help make that happen."

MongoDB databases are frequently stored on cloud-based infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services EC2 and Microsoft's Windows Azure, among other services. 10gen said it plans to invest the funding in further development of MongoDB and the cloud-based MongoDB Monitoring Service as well extending support for its customers and community of developers.